


Body and Soul

by Hatterized



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blood and Injury, Blow Jobs, Dirty Talk, Enemy Lovers, Gunplay, Hate Sex, Infidelity, Kind of..., M/M, Rimming, Rough Sex, Smut, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-07 21:28:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11632266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hatterized/pseuds/Hatterized
Summary: Rick has trouble accepting responsibility when he and Negan's relationship becomes physical, and takes it out on the man in his bed.





	1. Heart in Your Mouth

**Author's Note:**

> Story heavily inspired by the song Blame by Bastille

_It’s not my fault. None of this is my fault._

That was all Rick knew to tell himself. It was all he could stand to think. All of this had to be Negan’s fault, because if it wasn’t, if it was something else, if Rick was somehow complicit in all of this, then he wasn’t sure what he was going to do.

So he blamed Negan. He always blamed Negan, the man was an easy scapegoat on which he could pin his problems. It was Negan’s fault that Alexandria was subjugated, their supplies pillaged every week. It was Negan’s fault that he broke- physically, mentally, emotionally. And it was _that_ , that breakdown of his mental state, that Rick placed the initial blame for all of this. For it starting this whole, horrible mess.

Negan wouldn’t see it like that. Wouldn’t see it as a broken mess. No, in his head, he and Rick were happy. Or, at least, they had the potential to be happy, if Rick would just, as Negan put it, _Come the fuck around to the idea that we’re not so fucking different_.

Rick hated him a little more every time he said that, that they were the same. They weren’t the same. They couldn’t be. If they were the same, what would that make him? A monster, a murderer, and God only knew what else. And he wasn’t. He wasn’t those things. He’d killed, he’d stolen, he’d lied and cheated- oh, how he’d fucking done a hell of a lot of those last two things lately- but he wasn’t a monster. Not like Negan.

He threw the words at Negan when they were together, slung them like stones at the pane of a glass window, as if saying them somehow made it better. Made it _true_. And, _yeah_ , maybe he thought it did. Maybe, he thought, if he pretended like he hated it, if he screamed curses at Negan, hurled the filthiest words, the most degrading things he could conjure up, the other man would stop saying the sweet things. The filthy fucking lies he whispered into Rick’s ear while he was deep inside of him.

_Beautiful._

_Just the same._

_Gorgeous._

_Perfect for each other._

Sometimes, it got to be too much. Nobody could blame him, he thought. Nobody. He could only take so much of Negan’s lies. So he fought back, but not with words: he dug his nails into the other man’s back, remembering how Michonne used to do the same to him. He thought back to her, her warmth and sweetness and honest, welcoming love, and he hated himself. Hated Negan. The scratching turned into something more visceral then, more violent, raking at skin until it tore, blood and flesh collecting under his fingernails.

He hit Negan wherever he could reach, threw punches to his ribs, his stomach, his arms, his face. The first time Rick had done it, Negan had panicked, jumping off of him and shooting halfway across the room, horror on his face. And Rick had laughed at him then, because _fuck_ , he looked ridiculous. Naked, his cock shining with the slick of lube and only half-hard now that fear brought his blood rushing elsewhere. And for one bright, glorious moment, Rick had been sure that he’d gotten the jump on Negan, that the other man had genuinely feared for his safety, like he _should_ have. And then he’d spoken, and Rick had stopped laughing.

“Rick. Fuck. Fuck! _Rick_. I thought…I thought you wanted this. I’m so sorry, fuck, please, I thought you were fucking into it, I didn’t mean-we don’t have to fucking do anything. Shit. _Shit!_ ”

He’d looked absolutely distraught, and it took Rick a moment to understand how wrong they’d both read each other’s reactions. Negan thought that- _fuck_ , like there was any way Rick would ever let him-

“I’m so fucking sorry, Rick.”

It was the most genuine Rick had ever seen him, and it made him want to spit in his face. Sorry over something he hadn’t even done. His guilt seeped off of him, and if Rick had been less proud, if he’d cared less about Negan thinking of him as some victim, he would have let him keep thinking that he’d raped him, just to let him stew in the thick of his guilt.

But there was no way he was going to let Negan blame himself for something he hadn’t even done, not when there were so many disgusting things he _had_ done to blame himself for. So he spoke up.

“Shut the fuck up, Negan. You don’t like it rough? Can’t handle it?” He’d spread his legs then, an invitation, a challenge, knowing that was enough to get the other man back on top of him.

 _It wasn’t about sex_ , he told himself. He didn’t want to sleep with Negan. He just wanted an excuse to hurt him, and this was the only thing he could think of that would give him the opportunity. He took every scrap of information Negan had ever given him- his pride, his vulgarity, his domineering presence, his lustful stares at Rick, and he used them to his advantage.

_Get him into bed, get him to let me hurt him. That’s all it is. That’s fucking it._

He needed an outlet for his anger, his hatred, and this was it. The sex was a compromise. It didn’t mean anything, and he didn’t want it.

Of course, it was harder to keep up that lie when Negan got him hard, made him come.

_Doesn’t mean anything. A natural reaction. Can’t be helped. Not my fault._

Negan talked a lot in bed, spewing everything from sweet, intimate pet names to filthy, crass observations. _Baby, baby, so gorgeous, kitten, fuck- look how you’re spreading your legs for me so nice. You like it like this, Rick? You like it fucking hard, so that you’re fucking limping back out of this fucking house? You want everyone to know, don’t you? Want everyone to know what you’re doing when you pull me in here, how you fucking clench around my dick and scream my fucking name._

Rick found he much preferred the filth to the sweetness. Sugar from Negan’s lips was poison, so cloyingly sweet that it soured on his tongue. To accept it, to allow himself to bask in the warmth of his hushed praises and gentle kisses was to accept a pomegranate from Hades himself, and damned if Rick would let himself be trapped by Negan more than he already had been. What they had was a bargain- a crude exchange of services, Rick’s body for Negan’s pain.

_You little fucking slut, Rick. Fuck, you want this? You want me so fucking deep inside you, baby? Want me to mark you as mine, let you feel me dripping down your thighs while I parade you around your cute little town. Fuck, you fucking whore-_

At that, Rick lost his breath, Negan still behind him, driving him down into the damp sheets while he choked on them. _That- that word_. It felt like a brand to his flesh, iron-hot and scalding a blistered mark into his exposed skin. Skin he’d let Negan touch, let him take and use and _own_ in every conceivable way.

He hated Negan fucking into him from behind like this. It was harder to put his hands on him, harder to angle his fists to inflict pain the way he so desperately craved to. He reached hiding himself, to the sweaty, slick, hard body mounting his own, and _clawed_. He’d let his nails grow out a little just for this purpose, and felt the moment when the skin over Negan’s ribs gave way to the pressure he put there, felt delicate flesh rip away and curl under his fingers, felt the slick slide of blood in a cruel mockery of the slick slide of Negan’s cock in and out of him.

He pulled at a bloody fistful of the man’s dark, gelled hair so hard that he made Negan howl out a pained, ragged sound into his shoulder. A vulgar feeling of brutish triumph came over him then, at the sound of something so agonized and base coming out of Negan, and he felt his swollen cock give a hard twitch from where it hung down between his legs. He reached for it, the slightest brush of his fingers over the dripping head while Negan panted behind him, and then he was coming with a low whine, wet warmth spilling out of him and onto his fingers and the sullied sheets below.

When he looked at himself in the mirror later that night, long after the Saviors had gone and he’d tucked his children into their beds, he couldn’t meet his own eyes. He was fresh and dripping wet from his shower, having scrubbed away the evidence of Negan from his body- he had, in fact, spent the day feeling the evidence of Negan’s claiming leak out of him and down his legs. A punishment, he thought, for his weakness. A reminder of his guilt as he’d been forced to walk in stride with the man who had fucked him, tucked under his arm like a ragdoll. As if the soreness that had spread between his legs hadn’t been reminder enough.

It had been dry and tacky by the time he’d tried to wash it away, and he found himself bent over under the hot, steamy spray of the shower, scrubbing himself until his skin was as raw as his insides felt.

Even now that he was clean, he had the distinct feeling that Negan was still on him, still in him. He could feel it in the ache of his thighs and backside, the flaring tenderness there. He could see it in the ghost of touches on his stomach, his chest, his cock- he bit his lip, wiping at the clouded mirror, and realized that there was nowhere on his body that was safe from the constant reminder of Negan’s touch. Everywhere he looked sparked a memory of his hands, his mouth on him, and he wondered for a horrified moment if that had been intentional, if Negan had purposely staked his claim on him, planting his flag into Rick like an invading force and spreading his influence until there was no place, no matter how intimate, that was left untouched.

He let the mirror fog up again, obscuring the view.

* * *

There were rules that guided what they did together, spoken and unspoken. Spoken, by Negan: “You can so no at any fucking time, Rick. I only want you if you’re willing, I need you to know that right off the bat.”

Rick hated that fucking phrase- and it always came bundled together with a pleased little smirk from Negan, because of course he _knew_ exactly what he was saying.

The unspoken? Somehow Negan always, without fail, ended up being the one doing the fucking. Rick knew that should probably spark some hyper-masculine wounding of his ego, but it just…didn’t. Maybe because Negan had already stomped the shredded remains of that into the dirt alongside his friends’ skulls. Maybe because, since Negan was always so focused on fucking him, Rick was better able to focus on hurting him. It was harder to throw a punch if you were actively trying to make someone come.

Rick wished he could say that one of his limits had been kissing, that he’d spared himself that sweet intimacy, that he’d saved _something_ for himself. But kissing Negan was a battle all its own, made of teeth and tongue, and Rick loved nothing more than spilling Negan’s blood, seeing him pull away from his mouth with his lip split and crimson staining his peppery stubble. Sometimes, he smiled then, baring bloodied teeth, and Rick took satisfaction in his outside looking just as wild and feral as Rick knew his insides were.

He’d thought that one of their rules was that they just fucked- for weeks, that’s all they did, dragging each other into empty houses or outside the walls to park cars in the woods for quick fucks in the backseat. Rick liked it like that, just two bodies moving together, the pleasure mutual. Even with Negan inside of him, it didn’t feel like a submission, not _really_. But then, because Negan was never satisfied, Rick found himself being guided to his knees one afternoon, his hair petted as he was asked so nicely to _open your pretty little mouth for me, baby. Want to see what you look like with my dick down your throat._

He wasn’t rough about it, and somehow that made it even worse. He slid leather-clad fingers between Rick’s lips, wetting them and fingering gently over his tongue. Rick’s eyes burned, tears welling up and leaking down from the corners of his eyes, and he wasn’t sure if it was from the way he was choking around Negan’s cock or from the absolute humiliation of it that he felt burning in his belly. It was too much, it was all just too much, kneeling in front of him like this, mouth open and willing, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and exertion. It reminded him too much of that night in the woods, and he considered it a small blessing that Negan didn’t say anything about him _taking it like a champ_.

The whole time, their single spoken rule sat in his mind, tempting him. Why he didn’t say it, he didn’t even know. It was right _there_ , one little word, and he’d be free. Instead, he parted his lips and stuck out his tongue, felt saliva spilling from the corners of his mouth.

He was sure, so, so sure that Negan would want to come in his mouth, to watch him grimace and make the inevitable choice to swallow down his come.

The reality, of course, was that Rick underestimated Negan, because at the last possible second, he pulled out, spilling onto Rick’s face with a groan of satisfaction. And Rick just sat back on his heels and took it, too shocked to do anything but gape up at the man standing over him. There was a stripe of it across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose and that too reminded him of that night, of Abraham’s blood, warm and wet, slung onto his face from Lucille. How Negan had eagerly admired the way it had dripped from the bat- _his dirty girl_. The sudden connection _burned_ him- and suddenly he looked back on that night with a whole new wave of humiliation.

_They- they saw. Everyone saw, the way he…it was on my face the whole night-_

“Goddamn, Rick. Look at _you_. You’re the hottest fucking mess I’ve ever seen. You like me coming all over your face, or did you want a taste?” He smirked down at him. “Oh, wait. Looks like you fucking got one.”

Rick swallowed hard against this bitter taste on his tongue. He should have kept his mouth closed.

* * *

The turning of the tide came one afternoon when Rick returned to Alexandria after nearly dying on a supply run- only to find the Saviors there, already loading up their trucks. Negan looked downright gleeful upon seeing Rick, sauntering up and throwing one lanky leather-clad arm over his shoulder.

“Goddamn, Rick! You look like hell- you take a fucking dip somewhere, or is this all just sweat?” He plucked at the collar of Rick’s shirt- one of his favorites, a blue button-up that was now missing the top three buttons due to a walker clawing at it. It hung obscenely open, and Rick could feel the way Negan’s eyes drank in the exposed flesh, going so far as to tug it aside and expose a rosy nipple before Rick angrily swatted his hand away.

“Almost fell in a lake,” he spit through gritted teeth. Though, admittedly, a good portion of what was soaking through his shirt was sweat, too. Negan just kept rocking on his heels with his wolf’s grin.

“You know what, Rick? I really admire your fucking go-getter attitude. Tell you what, how about we take a little walk, you and me? You don’t need to deal with this shit. They’ve got it handled.”

 _They_ were Michonne and Rosita, who were both spitting fire from their eyes as Rick let himself be swept away.

They knew. He knew they did, and it fucking _ruined_ him. He never outright told them. No, he couldn’t even do that. But he knew they figured it out. Rick knew the day he returned home and found his bedroom devoid of a few things: shirts missing, empty drawers. A book that had sat on the nightstand for weeks was gone, and as were the two stone cat figurines that had recently been moved to his dresser. Their dresser.

The katana was gone from its place over the mantle. He slept alone that night, tossing and turning in a bed that felt too big and cold without her next to him, and they didn’t talk about it. Rick supposed that was fair, that she’d left without telling him. After all, he’d never had the decency to tell her that he was fucking someone else.

She lived with Tara and Rosita now, Carl had later told him with judgment in his eyes. Blame. He blamed Rick for her leaving, and Rick could only pray that Carl didn’t know the whole truth.

He didn’t. Michonne would never be so cruel, he knew, and Carl would likely be trying to move into Tara’s as well if he had in inkling as to what really happened between them.

Negan got him in the house- _his own fucking house_ , another unspoken line crossed- and pulled at his clothes, stripping him down to nothing. “Take a fucking shower, Rick. Not gonna stick my dick in you while you smell like a walker gut smoothie.” The smell didn’t seem to deter him from looking, though. He could feel the man’s eyes tracing the line of his soft cock as if his hand was actually on him. There was something about Negan that always found new ways to push at him, to bleed him dry, to take more than he had agreed to give without him realizing it. Standing here now, naked and soft and exposed while Negan leered at him, he felt like he was being eaten alive.

Face burning, Rick clambered into the glass stall and he could feel Negan’s hungry gaze roaming over his backside. He sat there, watching while Rick soaped himself, all dark eyes and lustful heat. Rick felt the insane urge to cover himself. Trapped in the shower, he felt on display- in a glass case, naked and in place for Negan’s personal pleasure.

He had barely begun to towel off before Negan had him on the bed- on _his_ bed- on his back. And maybe it was that he felt like a caged fucking animal, maybe it was that Negan was trying to fuck him in the house where his children slept, maybe it was just because he’d been awake for a day and a half without rest, but he snapped.

How the gun ended up in his hands, he didn’t even know. Negan had _graciously_ allowed them to keep a handful to protect themselves on supply runs, but it shouldn’t have been in his house. Must have skipped his mind- no sleep, after all.

How the gun ended up cocked and pressed into Negan’s forehead as he crouched between Rick’s thighs…well, he didn’t know that, either. But here he was, stripped naked, hair still dripping wet from his shower, cock full and stiff and arched up against his belly wile Negan stared up at him, for once thrown completely off guard.

God, it was worth it. He had to tell himself that. That look on his face, mouth slightly open, hazel eyes wide and uncomprehending. There was no doubt in Rick’s mind that he had just fucked himself and his people over by pulling this little stunt, but he was going to get the most out of it until Negan turned the tables back on him.

He could hear the rush of blood in his ears, feel the rapid thrum of his racing heartbeat in his fingertips as they gripped the cold metal, and he thought it was nothing short of a miracle that his hands weren’t shaking.

“Make yourself useful while you’re down there,” he breathed. “Go on. You had me do it for you. Use that loud fucking mouth on me.”

Negan had the audacity to _laugh_ then, nose crinkling while his mouth hovered over Rick’s dick. “Jesus fuck, Rick,” he snorted out, “if you wanted a fucking blowie, you could’ve just _said something_.”

And then he was dipping his head and swallowing down Rick’s cock, and _fuck_ , Rick couldn’t help but think, _that’s good_. The wet warmth, Negan’s cheeks hollowed around him, tongue smoothing over the silky flesh. It was skilled, practiced, and if Rick had breath in his lungs left to spare, he would have been calling him out, jeering about how much time Negan must have spent on his knees to get this good. He savored the notion- Negan on his knees, where he’d put Rick so many times. He wondered if, had he not pulled the gun out, Negan still would have done this for him.

The muzzle of the gun was still pressed firmly to Negan’s head, and when the plush warmth around his dick disappeared suddenly, Rick growled, shoving it harder into the skin. “Keep fucking going-” Rick broke off with a low cry when Negan’s mouth dipped lower, warmth caressing his balls as they were sucked gently. Negan’s hands groped at his thighs, shoving them up until his knees were bent and tucked against his chest. Rick lost his breath as the hands slid down to his ass, spreading him wide.

“Well, would you look at that,” Negan mused, thumbing against the sensitive opening, making it clench tight. “Looks good enough to eat.”

Negan was the only person Rick could imagine who would insist on cracking jokes while eating someone out with a gun to their head.

When wet warmth circled him there, Rick’s whole body jolted, his hold on the gun stammering for just a moment while his thighs clenched and his toes curled. “Oh, _fuck_.” He couldn’t open his eyes, his whole body tight as a bowstring as Negan’s mouth worked him in long, dragging licks. “You’re fucking lucky I didn’t have my finger on the trigger just now.”

Negan placed a wet, filthy kiss over the sensitive skin, and the feeling of stubble and rumbling laughter down _there_ made Rick’s eyes roll back into his skull. “Guess I fucking am. It would be a goddamn shame to get my brains blown out before I see the look on that smug fucking face of yours when I make you come with my tongue inside of you, Rick.”

“Shut- _ah_ \- shut up,” Rick moaned, hips rolling back even as he said it to try to get more pressure where he wanted it. Negan’s hand slid up to fondle his balls, to squeeze the base of his dick, and Rick couldn’t hold back the desperate whimper that left him at that. He was wet, leaking into Negan’s palm, it made the slide of Negan’s hand on him perfect. The tongue working him licked him open more firmly, gentle pressure teasing him until-

“F- _fuck!”_ Rick yelped helplessly when it happened, Negan’s tongue breaching the soft opening and sinking into him. He could hear himself, knew how he sounded right now: wrecked and squirming helplessly against the soft cotton sheets of his bed, practically _wailing_ as Negan’s tongue plunged in and out of him. He hated himself, was all too aware of every little thing in that moment- of the obscene wet sounds coming from between his legs, of how his baby daughter was just two rooms away, of the now more-bitter-than-sweet memories of he and Michonne coming together on this very bed that he was now laid out for Negan on like a sacrificial offering, open and too, too willing.

The gun dropped from his hands and then he was coming hard enough to make his vision blur at the edges, coating his stomach and feeling it drip wetly down his sides, staining the sheets.  Negan wasn’t stopping, eating Rick like he was the man’s last meal, and Rick’s hips twitched and rose off the bed.

For a moment, all of his awareness vanished, and it was just him and Negan, and he thought _I can deal with this._

And then, of course, Negan had to open his mouth.

“Damn, Rick. I didn’t expect you to be so fucking into that. You done that before?” He was so fucking smug, even now. “Your super-hot samurai girlfriend do that to you? Oh, I bet she does, I can just see her, makin’ you fucking scream for it. You this fucking submissive with her? She ride that pretty dick of yours-”

Negan was too busy with his mocking to anticipate Rick lunging at him, knocking him clean off the edge of the bed and onto the hardwood floor. The back of his head smacked it, the wind leaving him with a breathless grunt and Rick hoped that it _hurt_. He sobbed, broken, manic, as his knuckles met Negan’s face. He had him pinned, trapped between his thighs, and when blood blossomed across Negan’s face, Rick thought the man had never looked so beautiful.

 _Looks good in red_.

“Don’t fucking talk about her,” Rick beat the words into him, blacking his eyes, splitting the lips that had just been on him. “You took her from me. _You_ did. This is on you, not me. _Not me!”_ His fingers were tight around Negan’s neck, squeezing. Negan was finally fighting back, pawing, shoving at him, clawing at his hands the way Rick always clawed at his back, but it wasn’t enough, not enough to stop him.

He looked good in purple, too, Rick discovered.

“You did this. _You did this to us!”_ Whether he meant him and Negan or all of Alexandria, he didn’t even know. Negan wasn’t pushing at him anymore, just making soft little choked noises. His eyes were wide like before, with the gun, but there was something in his eyes this time, something new that Rick had never thought he’d see in the face of the devil.

It only hade his hands tighten, make him press him harder into the floor, because _how fucking dare he look hurt? How fucking dare he act like I’m the one to blame for this?_

He thought he would feel something when Negan stopped moving- relief or fear or triumph or _something_.

_This man used you. Owned your body, your soul. Took and took and took from you until eventually you just decided to give. You lost Michonne, lost your friends, your power, you’d lose everyone if they knew what he did to you, what you let him do-_

Tears dripped down Rick’s face, off the tip of his nose and down onto Negan’s cheeks, making the man beneath him look like he was the one crying.

 _Not my fault_ , he insisted. _None of it. It just…happened. It just happened, all of it._

_You could have said no._

_He would have stopped._

_You wanted it._

And there it was, the truth he’d been running from for weeks. He was naked and covered in his own come, and there was a dead man on his bedroom floor, and he’d ruined his own life so thoroughly that he couldn’t see a way out. Negan was utterly silent, and in the deafening quiet sat a revelation that Rick had been too scared to touch, too disgusted with himself to acknowledge for longer than it took him to shove it back under the bed like it was the boogie man come to get him.

 _You did this_ , he’d screamed at Negan.

 _You did this_ , he told himself now, with his knuckles split over Negan’s cheekbones and his blood smeared over his palms. _You fucked him. You killed him._

His lips were over Negan’s before he could think about it, his hands atop each other and pressing into the center of Negan’s still chest. _Fuck, fuck fuck, please wake up. Please don’t die, please don’t let this be my fault, too-_

Suddenly there was a little too much give under his palms and he heard the sickening crack of bone giving away.

_No, no, no, please, fuck, wake up, wake up you piece of shit-_

A sudden jerk of the mouth beneath his own sent Rick reeling back, palms splayed against the floor. Negan’s chest heaved, a deeply pained groan escaping from his bloodied lips, and Rick was back beside him instantly, pulling him onto the side without the cracked rib. He watched as Negan dry heaved pitifully, blood gurgling from his parted lips while his bruised cheek pressed into the floor.

How Rick’s trembling hands found their way into Negan’s hair, stroking soothingly, he couldn’t say.

Negan was the only person Rick could think of who could make jokes after being technically dead for two minutes.

“Fuck,” he slurred wetly, “you usually wanna use a safeword for that shit, Rick.”


	2. I've Got You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the original plan for this was to have a part 2 from Negan's pov, but I scrapped it because Regan week had me overwhelmed, but then Fluffinson said a part 2 from Negan's perspective would be cool so....here we are!

Negan jerked back into consciousness, pain splitting him from the inside out. Something in his chest ached terribly, his throat felt like it had been sanded down to gristle, and his stomach flipped over suddenly-

He groaned painfully as Rick turned him onto his side with shaky hands just in time for the nausea to claim him, the heaving of his empty stomach making the pain in his chest even sharper. His lips were wet, everything had the salt and iron tang of blood…and Rick’s hands were in his hair, stroking, calming him.

 _Rick_. Rick had tried to fucking kill him.

 _You did this_ , he’d screamed over and over again, his fingers tight and cruel around Negan’s throat. He could still feel the ghost of them pressing in, crushing the air out of him.

Rick nearly had killed him. Had beaten him half to death on his bedroom floor, and if the thick, throbbing pain encompassing his whole body was any indication, he’d done some real damage. He really and truly didn’t know what the fuck to say to that, so he did what he always did when he was at a loss for words: cracked a crude joke.

“Fuck, you usually wanna use a safeword for that shit, Rick.” His voice was slurred and weak even to his own ears.

Why he wasn’t pulling away from Rick he couldn’t say. The man’s hands on him should have set off warning bells in his head now. He should be dragging himself as far away as he could and getting back to his soldiers and inflicting some goddamned _punishment_ for what had just gone down. Hell, he'd killed people for far less than this.

But Rick- fucking _Rick_ , who had always withheld sweetness from him during the months they’d become intimate, was on the floor with him, trembling like he was afraid and cradling his head like he was trying to soothe away all the pain he’d inflicted.

He wanted so, _so_ fucking badly to ask. Had it just been that he’d dared to bring up Michonne?

Rick had pulled a gun on him. Had looked down the barrel at him with ice in his eyes. Had been looking at him like that since the beginning, Negan now realized. Stupidly, foolishly, he’d thought that the heat between them had melted all of that freezing hatred away. Told himself that Rick just liked being rough, needed to blow off some steam. Not like life had dealt him an easy hand.

Not like Negan had, either.

 _No_ , he thought. No, it hadn’t just been Michonne. Rick had been draped in red flags and warning signs since the first time they’d fucked. He could remember it so clearly despite the haze of confusion and lust he’d been swept up in then: how he had been about to press inside of Rick and the man had raked his nails down his arms hard enough to break the skin, how Rick had struck him over and over again against the ribs and he’d jolted halfway across the room, terrified that he had read everything wrong and Rick hadn’t wanted this after all. Rick had laughed then, spread his legs like a challenge taunted him with a " _You don’t like it rough?"._

Negan very much did like it rough, but it was pretty clear now that Rick wasn't interested in slapping him around because he was a kinky motherfucker. 

“I-I think I broke one of your ribs,” Rick said quietly into the still air. “While I was…reviving you. I heard a crack.”

_Reviving me._

He wanted to ask, was too scared to. He hated that, being scared. It was something he hadn’t been in a long fucking time.

“Please don’t hurt them.”

The audacity of it almost made Negan laugh- that Rick could sit here and pet him like a dog and plead with him not to hurt his family in the same breath that he told named how much damaged he’d inflicted on him in his blind rage.

Strangely, his own rage didn’t rise to the occasion. He felt painful, hollowed-out, and that’s usually when he allowed anger to seep into the cracks and fill him up again, but it didn't come.

He had to force himself to sit, and the movement to thread his fingers into Rick’s hair and _yank_ until the man gasped in pain was robotic, disjointed. “You don’t get to fucking tell me who I can hurt, Rick.” The words were labored, and not just on account of the rasp in his throat. The sentence left him drained, the pain and fear and _something else_ in Rick’s eyes made him want to look away. “We’re taking an assload of your medical supplies, since you decided to go fucking rogue on me.”

It wasn’t enough. The punishment didn’t nearly fit the crime. He knew it, Rick knew it, and if he dared to step out of this house looking beaten halfway to hell and Rick looking like he’d gotten away scot-free, everyone else would know it, too.

“Get on your knees, Rick. Don’t fucking fight me on this. You wanna keep this between us, right?”

“Yes,” Rick begged, blue eyes fractured. “Yes, please, just- just me. Just me.”

The phrase _this is going to hurt you more than it hurts me_ came to mind as Negan kicked out at him, bare foot connecting with Rick’s ribs over and over again until Rick howled in breathless pain and Negan felt the sickeningly _wrong_ sensation of give where the bone should have been firm and unbroken. His body ached as he kicked Rick onto his back, as he stomped down on his right hand and Rick hissed and shuddered against the wooden floor. He felt woozy, his arms protested the rough swings at Rick’s face when he finally dropped down to straddle his bare chest.

His belly was still streaked with come, dried on now, sticky. Negan brought a knee roughly up between Rick’s legs just to hear the pained, high-pitched sound he would make.

He didn’t _want_ to hear it. It made him feel sick, made him want to run his palms up the man’s naked thighs and use his mouth on that tender area until Rick’s pain became pleasure. _I don't want you like this, Rick_ , he wanted to cry. _Why are you making me do this?_

Rick’s blue eyes were so raw, open and honest in a way they’d never been before, and that dug deeper than the knifelike pain in his ribs.

 _I’m sorry_ , they said.

 _I understand now_ , they said. _I want your sweetness, I want to kiss you without blood on our lips, I want to be better. I know what you meant now, when you said we were just alike._

He should have been angry that it took Rick this long to understand what he’d wanted from him. Instead, it just made him sad. _It took you almost fucking killing me to realize that I only ever wanted to be gentle with you._

He struck Rick over and over until his eyes were too blackened and swollen for him to see the apology in them or for Rick to see the tears on Negan’s cheeks. He wanted to scream in Rick’s battered face: _see what you’ve made me do? I don’t want this for us. I never wanted this for us._

 _You did this to us._ Like Rick had screamed at him as he’d tightened his fingers and Negan’s vision had gone dark and fuzzy at the edges like an old photograph.

His heart wasn’t in it, and he wondered if Rick could tell, if he truly knew that Negan was only painting him red as a symbol to the people outside, the people they both put on a front for. The people they lied to on a daily basis, pretending they hadn’t fallen prey to each other months ago. Pretending like what they did behind closed doors wasn’t affecting anything else.

After, they laid panting and pained on the floor. Negan helped Rick into his clothes and stumbled out the front door beside him. Waved off Simon’s questions, just told him to _go get more of their fucking medical shit. I’m a fucking mess._

* * *

One broken rib, a handful of cuts but no stitches required, heavy bruising on his face and around his throat. Doctor Carson didn’t dare ask questions, just patched him up while dodging his eyes and giving him the best painkillers they had stocked. It paid well to be at the top.

He didn’t want to use them, left the bottle sitting sealed tight on his nightstand. He kept prodding at the swelling around his neck, fascinated. _Fucker’s got me hooked on the pain_ , he thought wryly.

He couldn’t decide if he wanted Rick to be lying awake like him, or soundly asleep, pumped full of drugs to numb away the pain Negan hadn’t wanted to inflict in the first place.

In the end, he was a petty man. He hoped Rick was prodding at the ribs Negan had broken inside of him and wondering why the flaring pain was a comfort.

* * *

Negan usually dropped by once just for a _friendly visit_ with Rick in the middle of the week before a pickup. He skipped that this time around, both to let Rick stew in the panic he was inevitably feeling that Negan would show up guns blazing ready for retribution, and because he just couldn’t make himself _go_.

Because what if last time had been their _last time?_ What if he showed up and Rick took everything as a sign to finally break off this whole thing?

He didn’t want to think about that, and he didn’t want to have to ask the questions that he knew he was going to have to ask eventually.

Rubbing one out to the thought of sliding in and out of Rick wasn’t the same without nails dragging down his back. He made do by pressing on the fading purple thumbprints ringing his throat.

* * *

Rick was at the front gate, waiting for him when he arrived. Dutiful, subdued. He kept his eyes down like a scolded dog, and it made Negan want to turn his face up to him, fingers gentle under his chin, and force him to see that he’d stopped wanting Rick to be his fucking _pet_ a long time ago.

Rick fucking Grimes, always missing the damn point. Always giving him exactly what he wanted at the wrong fucking time in the worst fucking way.

Rick seemed surprised when Negan pulled him aside and into his house. “We- I don’t- _Negan_.” He pushed him away, hands gentle against his chest, cautious of his rib. Negan could tell that was what he was doing, because his eyes finally found his, wide and concerned and searching for signs of pain. It was sweet, almost. A good sign, Negan liked to think.

He had to ask.

“Was I dead? Did you fucking- you said you fucking _revived_ me. Did you kill me? Were you _trying_ to kill me?” When he finally said it out loud, dared to speak the words, he realized he already knew the answer and he nearly told Rick to forget it.

He didn’t.

“You were…yeah. You were gone. Not breathing.”

Negan patiently waited for the rest of his answer.

“I don’t know if I was trying to…I don’t know,” Rick confessed hoarsely. “I wasn’t thinking about…but that doesn’t matter. I don’t know if I was trying to, but I did.”

Negan had never dealt with someone like Rick in his life. People had tried to kill him before- enemies, disillusioned followers trying to incite rebellion, starving souls on the road just looking to protect what was theirs or desperately try to take what they needed from others in their plight.

Before this, he’d counted Rick as a lover. Perhaps not a sweet, gentle one, but that was what they were. He’d been naïve to think that just because Rick took him to bed that it meant anything more. Rick, above all, was loyal to his core. Loyal to his people, his _family_. He had strayed from his lover, but he’d still choose her over Negan when it came down to their lives. Of course he hadn’t let their affair wipe his memory of what Negan had taken from him, what he was still taking every week.

And that, _that_ \- that was what finally made him boil over.

“You’re just such a fucking martyr for your people, aren’t you? Saint _fucking_ Rick, grinning and bearing through everything the devil does to you. Is that _still_ what I am to you, Rick? The devil come a-knockin’ at your goddamned door? On your shoulder, whispering in your ear to do bad, naughty things? In your bed, takin’ you apart piece by piece, stealing your virtue?"

“I-”

“You think they’re worth all that? You think these people still worship you, still respect you? Your name is fucking _mud_ to them, baby. Mud that I dragged you through and shoved you down into. I hear what they say about you. Call you a whore, call you my _bitch_.”

Pain flared in Rick’s eyes. “That’s what you call me, too.”

Negan frowned. _Missing the fucking point, as always._ “I don’t mean it like they do.” When Rick didn’t have anything to say to that, he wanted to scream, shake him, make him talk, make him react to _something_. Just _fucking say something. Scream at me, just let me inside that thick fucking skull of yours._

Instead, he turned toward the front door, stopping short halfway out and groping for the gift in his pocket. Why he felt like he had to make anything up to Rick, he didn’t know.

“Fucking take this. For your ribs.”

He threw the bottle over his shoulder, heard it land with a soft rattle on the floor, heard Rick pause and then retrieve it. _Good boy._

He was tired, didn’t force up the words he normally would have spoken. It was a chore to keep up the act.  _What do we say, Rick?_

The answer came anyway, so genuine and contrite that Negan was almost startled, thinking he’d spoken aloud after all. “Thank you, Negan.”

* * *

He skipped the next two pickups in Alexandria, and he was ashamed that he had to force himself to not ask Arat about Rick- how he was, if he was healing well, if he looked like he was still in pain, if he asked about him.

_Pathetic, fucking pathetic._

The third week, Arat cut him off on his way to _anywhere but Alexandria_ , tilting her head up at him and scanning him with dark, piercing eyes.

“Sir, I don’t know why you assigned me to lead the Alexandria pickups. And I’m grateful for the responsibility. But you should know- Rick?” Negan’s ears burned at the name. “He asked if you were coming back. What should I tell him?”

“Tell him whatever the fuck you want, Arat. Tell him I’m too busy fucking my gorgeous fucking wives two at a time to come over there and babysit. Tell him I don’t see the fucking point of coming anymore. Tell him to go fucking fuck himself.”

He always admired Arat for how dutiful a soldier she was, but the way her face didn’t shift from that eerily knowing look the whole time they spoke downright gave him the creeps.

* * *

“Are you hiding from me or something?”

Negan nearly dropped Lucille onto the bedroom floor at the sudden sound of Rick’s voice. _Rick_ , who was standing in his doorway like a goddamned ghost, haunting him even in his own home.

How the fuck did he get in here?

“How the fuck did you-”

“Snuck into the back of one of your people’s trucks. Wasn’t hard.” Rick put his hands on his hips, blue eyes flicking judgmentally around the room. “Nice place. Guess it pays well to be- what did you call me? _King Shit_.”

Rick using his own words against him did strange, unsettling things to Negan’s stomach. He lovingly laid Lucille on the couch and then got up in Rick’s face. He hoped that it seemed like an intimidation tactic and not what it was.

He fucking _missed_ him. 

Rick smelled like sweat, probably from being in the back of the truck and then roaming the Sanctuary to find him. He could see beads of it at his hairline, on his neck, and he almost desperately wanted to lick them away, remind himself what Rick tasted like when he was flushed and naked and sweating into the bedsheets. “Why the fuck are you here?”

Rick shrugged. “Needed some closure, I guess. Need you to tell me if this whole…if this thing is over. So I can stop waiting on you to come back.”

“Can’t fucking stay away from me, huh?” His grin was as weak and transparent as his words. _I can’t fucking stay away from you. I want to. Been trying to._

He knew himself well enough to know that if Rick hadn't shown up just now, he would have snapped and made a trip to Alexandria himself. 

“Just give me a yes or no, Negan. Please. I can’t keep doing this every week.”

“You tied to kill me.”

“I brought you back.”

“You fucking hate me, Rick. Go back to your girlfriend. Go find yourself someone else that you don’t have to fucking brutalize to get off with.” Rick picked up on the wounded not in his voice, eyes softening, fingers coming up to touch his face, and Negan wanted to shove him away, out the door, because _don’t you dare fucking tease me, Rick._

“Don’t be sweet to me if you don’t mean it, baby.” He couldn’t make himself say please, but he was still begging.

Rick melted into him, hands sliding up under his shirt, fingers skimming deprived flesh that was already singing at his touch. “I don’t want it to be like that anymore. I’m not gonna…I’m not gonna hurt you, Negan.”

He laughed at that, because how the hell else was this going to end but in flames? Rick touched him, and he could feel himself burning.

He said yes anyway, because he couldn’t think of a better way to go than entwined in Rick’s ashes. “Okay. Come here. Come the fuck here, Rick.”

Rick looked good wrapped in gray silk, he discovered. Looked good on his back, stripped down to nothing and clinging to Negan, curls spread out against the plush pillows. He looked good hovering above him, one of Negan’s own legs slung over his strong shoulders as he rocked his hips forward.

He looked good after, sheets slung low enough on his waist that Negan could see the _v_ of his hips. He rolled over when he’d caught his breath, the sheets slipping off him entirely as he crawled over Negan again.

“Give me a fucking minute, Rick. It’s been a long time since anyone’s fucked me like that-”

Rich shushed him, lips finding the pale, yellowing bruises over his still-healing rib. He spent a long time at his throat, pressing feather-light kisses of contrition to marks that had long since faded, chasing away the memory of unforgiving fingers. “Let me fix it.”

Negan let him.


End file.
